Egyptian ship disappears

By Anastasia Tomazhenkova: Several days ago a cargo ship with its 14-member crew left an Egyptian port and went in the Red Sea en route for Sudan. The vessel went missing. Egypt authorities launched a search for the ship Tuesday, a government spokesman said.

The vessel, Badr 1, left Egypt's Suez Canal carrying a 1,700 metric ton (1874 U.S. ton) cargo and a crew of nine Egyptians, including the captain, four Sudanese and a Yemeni on board, said Ahmed al-Quweisny, a foreign ministry official.

The ship's destination was Port Sudan, but it was unclear when and where the vessel went missing along the 1,280 kilometer (800-mile) route.

Rescue ships are thoroughly combing the area along the stretches of the Sudanese and Egyptian shores backed up by a search plane, said al-Quweisny. But so far, all efforts to locate the ship, which did not send a distress signal at the time it went missing, failed.

Meanwhile, a Sudanese official with the transportation ministry, Bridges Fatih Saeed met Tuesday with Egyptian ambassador to Sudan, Mohamed Shazali, to discuss the missing ship. The two said that both countries' shipping authorities would continue doing "their best" to find the vessel, said the state SUNA news agency in Khartoum.

SUNA said the ship, built in 1960 and owned by the Afro-Asia Shipping Company, carried a cargo of cement. The company has said its vessel conformed to all safety requirements and had all needed permits for sailing, according to al-Quweisny.